I'll leave this discussion "watched", so I don't miss anything you add
later. Or, feel free to email me with questions.

Meanwhile, two things to remember:

1) Almost any program that imports text may mess things up a bit. They're
trying to help by guessing how different types of data should look. So, it
makes no sense to pass the data through TWO programs, both of which may
force their "opinion" on the results. This is why I suggest going directly
to Access, skipping Excel.

2) Any time you're dealing with a text file from a new source, you should
inspect it with a text editor, which will NOT make any changes to the data.
This allows you to see the text in its pure form, so you can compare it to
the results in Access, and it alerts you to potential problems which you
need to deal with.

There's a nice, free text editor called Notetab (not to be confused with
Notepad, which comes with Windows, but won't open very large files).
Definitely worth getting:
http://www.download.com/NoteTab-Ligh...ml?tag=lst-0-1

-Doug

"terri" wrote in message
...
I just started here last week so I am trying to figure out what is where.
It
sounds like I need to talk to the folks that actually download the csv
file.
They are the ones saving it as a csv file in excel. It sounds like you
are
saying it will make things easier if the csv file is downloaded from its
source into Access, correct? I am not even sure where the file comes from
but I will find out. You pointed out a good question. I may be coming
back
with some more questions once I find out where the data begins. Thanks.

--
Terri


"Doug Kanter" wrote:

Excel has a limit of 65536 rows. Opening your text file in an text editor
and hitting CTRL-END will tell you how many lines you have. Again, my
question: Why are you opening the text file in Excel if its final
destination is Access?

"terri" wrote in message
...
My concern is that our data may be too big for excel so I need to keep
it
in
a text file to load into Access. Any other words of wisdom? Thanks.
--
Terri


"Doug Kanter" wrote:


"terri" wrote in message
...
In the original data file (text file - csv format) one of the fields
has
date
data and it looks like this: Jan-06. When I select "text to
columns"
and
parse the data, the format of this field changes and looks like
this:
6-Jan.
I need to import this data into access and this date field is
causing
problems. I tried manually changing the format back to its original
form
but
when I save the file and then go back into it, it shows up as 6-Jan
again.
How do I keep the formatting from changing when I parse the data?
Thanks.
Any help is appreciated.
--
Terri

Format the cells in the Excel sheet *before* they receive the text
data.
Then, copy & paste the data into those cells.